The present invention generally relates to an electronic or microwave oven and, more particularly, to a cooking time adjusting arrangement for use in the electronic oven.
An electronic oven to which the present invention pertains and which is now in wide use essentially comprises an oven-defining structure having a hingedly supported door adapted to close an access opening formed at one side of the oven-defining structure, a magnetron for generating high frequency energy for heat-treating food material within the oven-defining structure, and a timer unit for adjusting the period of time during which the magnetron is operated so as to apply the high frequency energy to one particular food material. With the electronic oven, food items can be heat-treated or cooked in an extraordinarily short period of time, for example, on the order of seconds, and, in view of the relatively high speed of cooking, the timer unit plays an important role in determining the cooking time, i.e., the period of time during which the magnetron is operated.
The timer unit heretofore largely employed in the conventional electronic oven includes an operating shaft, an operating knob having a pointer needle and a calibrated scale imprinted, or otherwise embossed, with a plurality of sequential digits representing the cooking time. The operating knob is rigidly mounted on the operating shaft for transmitting a rotational force of the operating knob to said operating shaft thereby to operate the timer unit in accordance with the reading of the pointer needle then registered with any one of the digits on the calibrated scale.
In such a conventional arrangement, in order to set the timer unit so as to select a proper cooking time with respect to any one particular food material or item, the user is required to refer to a cooking book in which the proper cooking time for the particular food material or item is described, or otherwise to rely on the memory.
In practice, there are a number of food materials and food items that can be heat-treated or cooked by the electronic oven and, in view of this, relying on memory often results in confusion, in which case one particular food material or item cannot be successfully heat-treated or cooked. The cooking book may be a reliable friend to the user, but it will be difficult, or inconvenient if not difficult, to find which book discloses a menu the user intends to serve and where such menu is described in the same book.
Some types of conventional electronic ovens are imprinted with a plurality of different menus that can be cooked in different cooking times. However, the number of the menus that can be imprinted in the vicinity of the timer unit is limited because of a limited space available for this purpose.